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This
address entitled - "Distorted Morality - America's War On Terror?"
- was delivered by Noam Chomsky at Harvard University in February 2002
- more than 1 year before the illegal, criminal invasion of Iraq by Bush
and Blair.

Thanks.
I just got back from Brazil where they don't have any fire codes and if
you think this is uncomfortable you should see a meeting there -- people
packed so tight that there was a good question whether the oxygen level
would suffice. Fortunately, there wasn't a fire or it would have been
a huge catastrophe.

Well,
the title, you noticed, had a question mark after it and the reason for
the question mark is that whatever has been happening for the past several
months and is going on now, and however you evaluate it -- like
it, hate it, or whatever -- it's pretty clear that it cannot be a war
on terror. In fact, that's close to a logical necessity, at
least if we accept certain pretty elementary assumptions and principles,
so let me try to make those clear at the outset.

The
first principle guideline, if you like, is that we ought to, I will try
and I think that we should, bend over backwards to give the benefit of
the doubt to the United States government whenever it's possible. So,
that if there is any dispute about how to interpret something, we will
assume they're right.

The
second guideline is that we should take very seriously the pronouncements
of leadership especially when they are made with great sincerity and emotion.
So, for example, when George Bush tells us that
he is the most devoted Christian since the Apostles, we should
believe him, take him at his word and we should therefore conclude that
he certainly has memorized, over and over again, in his Bible reading
classes and in church, the famous definition of "hypocrite"
that's given in the gospels. Namely, the hypocrite
is the person who applies to others standards that he refuses to apply
to himself. So if you are not a hypocrite you assume that if
something is right for us then it's right for them and if it is wrong
when they do it, it is wrong when we do it. That is really elementary
and I assume that the President would agree and all of his admirers as
well. So those are the principles that I would like to start with.

Well,
a side comment. Unless we can rise to that minimal
level of moral integrity we should at least stop talking about things
like human rights, right and wrong, and good and evil, and all such high
afflatus things because all our talk should be dismissed, in fact, dismissed
with complete repugnance unless we can at least rise to that
minimal level. I think that's obvious and I hope there would be agreement
on that, too.

Well,
with that much in place -- just that much for background -- let me formulate
a thesis. The thesis is that we are all total hypocrites on any issue
relating to terrorism. Now, let me clarify the notion "we."
By "we," I mean people like us -- people who have enough high
degree of privilege, of training, resources, access to information --
for whom it is pretty easy to find out the truth
about things if we want to. If we decide that that is our vocation,
and in the case in question, you don't really have to dig very deep, it's
all right on the surface. So when I say "we," I mean that category.
And I definitely mean to include myself in "we" because I have
never proposed that our leaders be subjected to the kinds of punishment
that I have recommended for enemies. So that is hypocrisy. So if there
are people who escape it I really don't know them and have not come across
them. It's a very powerful culture. It's hard to escape its grasp. So
that's thesis number one, we are all total hypocrites, in the sense of
the gospels, on the matter of terrorism. The
second thesis is stronger, namely, that the first thesis is so obvious
that it takes real effort to miss it. In fact, I should go
home right now because it is obvious. Nevertheless, let me continue and
say why I think both theses are correct.

Well,
to begin with, what is terrorism? Got to say something about that. That
is supposed to be a really tough question. Academic seminars and graduate
philosophy programs and so on -- a very vexing and complex question. However,
in accordance with the guidelines that I mentioned, I think there is a
simple answer, namely, we just take the official U.S. definition of terrorism.
Since we are accepting the pronouncements of our leaders literally, let's
take their definition. In fact, that is what I have always done. I have
been writing about terrorism for the last twenty years or so, just accepting
the official definition. So, for example, a simple and important case
is in the U.S. army manual in 1984 which defines terrorism as the calculated
use of violence or the threat of violence to attain goals that are political,
religious or ideological in nature.

Well,
that seems simple, appropriate. A particularly good choice because of
the timing: 1984. 1984, you will recall, was the time that the Reagan
Administration was waging a war against terrorism. Particularly what they
called state-supported international terrorism a "plague spread by
depraved opponents of civilization itself" in a "return to barbarism
in the modern age" -- I'm quoting [Secretary of State] George Shultz
who was the administration moderate. The other guideline is that we will
keep to the moderates, not the extremists.

So
that's 1984, Reagan had come into office a couple of years earlier. His
administration had immediately declared that the war against terrorism
would be the focus of U.S. foreign policy and they identified two regions
as the source of this plague by depraved opponents of civilization itself
-- Central America and the Middle East. And there was quite wide agreement
on that and so, in 1985, for example -- every year the Associated Press
has a poll of editors on the most important story of the year -- and in
1985, the winner was Middle East terrorism. So they agree. Right towards
the end of that year, 1985, Shimon Peres, Israel's Prime Minister, came
to Washington and Reagan and Peres denounced the evil scourge of terrorism,
referring to the Middle East. Scholarship and experts also agree.

There
is a huge literature for the last twenty years on terrorism, particularly
state-supported international terrorism. We don't have time review it
but a good illustration, which I will keep to, is the December 2001 issue
of the journal Current History, a good and serious journal. Its article
called "America at War" includes leading historians, specialists
and experts on terrorism and they identify the 1980s as the era of state-sponsored
terror, agreeing with the Reagan Administration. I agree with that, too.
I think it was the era of state-sponsored international terrorism. One
leading author, Martha Crenshaw, says that in that era the United States
adopted a pro-active stance to deter the plague. Mostly, it's about the
Middle East but Central America is occasionally mentioned. ... One or
two authors or co-authors from the Brookings Institution describe the
U.S. Contra War against Nicaragua as a model for ... U.S. support for
the Northern Alliance in the current phase of the war against terrorism.
The seeds of contemporary terrorism however are much deeper, though.

The
major historian in the group -- David Rapoport, the leading academic specialist
on terrorism, editor of the Journal of Terrorism and so on -- he points
out that it goes back to -- the origins of modern terrorism, like Osama
bin Laden -- it goes back to the early 1960s and I am quoting him now,
when "Vietcong terror against the American Goliath ... kindled the
hopes that the Western heartland was vulnerable ..." I won't comment
on that but, just as an exercise, you might try to find a historical analog
to that statement somewhere. I'll just leave it at that. Without commenting,
if you check through the scholarly literature you'll find the same story
all the time, virtually no exceptions.

The
world agreed with the Reaganites, too. In 1985, right after Reagan and
Peres had denounced the evil scourge of terrorism, the
General Assembly passed a resolution condemning terrorism, and in 1987,
it passed a much stronger resolution and a much more explicit one denouncing
terrorism in all its forms and calling on all states to do everything
they can to fight against the plague and everything you like.
It's true that that wasn't unanimous. There was one abstention, namely
Honduras, and two votes against -- the usual
two. They gave their reasons for voting against the major UN
resolution on international terrorism, namely,
both states -- the United States and Israel
-- pointed to the same paragraph as the reason for their negative vote.
It was a paragraph that said that nothing in the present resolution could
in anyway prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence,
as derived from the United Nations Charter, of people forcibly derived
of that right ... particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes
and foreign occupation, or could deprive them of the right to obtain support
for others in these ends in accord with the charter with the United Nations.
That was the offending paragraph, and it is easy to understand why it
raised a serious problem for the United States and Israel. The African
National Congress was identified officially as a terrorist organization
in the United States and South Africa was officially an ally. But the
phrase "struggle against colonial and racist regimes" plainly
referred to the struggle of the ANC against the apartheid regime. So that's
unacceptable. The phrase "foreign occupation,"
everyone understood, referred to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza, then in its 20th year, extremely harsh and brutal from the beginning
and continuing only because of decisive U.S. military, economic and diplomatic
support that runs up to the present. So, obviously, that was
unacceptable. So therefore it was 153 to 2 with one abstention. So it
wasn't totally unanimous. It wasn't reported and it has disappeared from
history. You can check to find out. Incidentally,
that's standard practice. When the master says something is wrong, it's
down the memory hole, doesn't get reported and it's forgotten.
But it's there, if you want to look, you can discover it, I'll give you
the sources if you like.

Well,
Reagan at that time, let's recall, he and Peres were talking about the
evil scourge of terrorism in the Middle East. George Shultz didn't entirely
agree. He thought that what he called the most alarming manifestation
of state-sponsored terrorism was frighteningly close to home. Namely,
it was a "cancer ... in our land mass," a cancer right nearby
that was threatening to conquer the hemisphere with a "revolution
without borders" -- a rather interesting
propaganda fabrication, revealed to be a fraud instantly, but always used
repeatedly afterwards, even by the same journals that explained why it
was a total fabrication. It was just too useful to abandon.
And this is also interesting, if you think about it, the fabrication had
a certain element of truth in it, an important element of truth. We can
come back to that if you like. Anyhow, this cancer in our land mass was
threatening to conquer everything, openly following Hitler's Mein Kampf,
and we plainly had to do something about that.

There
is a serious day in the United States called Law Day -- elsewhere in the
world it is called May Day -- May 1st, a day for the support of the struggles
of the American workers for an eight hour day. But in the United States,
it's a jingoist holiday called Law Day. On Law Day 1985, President Reagan
declared a national emergency because the government
of Nicaragua constitutes "an unusual and extraordinary threat to
the national security and foreign policy of the United States..."
That was renewed annually. George Schultz informed Congress that we must
cut the Nicaraguan cancer out and not by gentle means, things are too
serious for that. And so, to quote Schultz -- recall, the administration
moderate, the "good cop" -- to quote Schultz, he said: "Negotiations
are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across
the bargaining table." He condemned those
who advocate "utopian legalistic means like outside mediation, the
United Nations, the World Court while ignoring the power element of the
equation." I'll avoid quoting hard-liners. At that time,
the United States was exercising the "power element of the equation"
with mercenary forces based in Honduras attacking Nicaragua. They were
under the supervision of John Negroponte who was just appointed to run
the diplomatic side of the diplomatic component of the current war on
terror as the UN ambassador. The military component
of the current war on terror is Donald Rumsfeld who at that time was Ronald
Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East -- the other place where the
plague was raging through 1985. In fact, the United States
at that time was also blocking "utopian, legalistic means" that
were being pursued by the World Court, the Latin American countries and
others, and it continued to block those means, right until the end, until
the final victory of its terrorist wars throughout Central America.

Well,
how was the war against state-sponsored terrorism waged in those two regions
by the people who in fact are leading the new phase? (So pretty close
historical continuity, not just those two, of course.) Well, just to illustrate,
let's pick the peak year, the worst year, 1985 in the Middle East, top
story of the year. So who wins the prize for the worst acts of terrorism
in the Middle East in 1985? Well, I know of three candidates, maybe you
can suggest a different one. One candidate is
a car bombing in Beirut in 1985, The car was placed outside a mosque.
The bomb was timed to go off when people were leaving to make sure it
killed the maximum number of people. It killed, according to the Washington
Post, 80 people. It wounded over 250, mostly women and girls leaving the
mosque. There was a huge explosion so it blew up the whole street, killing
babies in beds and so on and so forth. The bomb was aimed at
a Muslim sheik who escaped. It was set
off by the CIA in collaboration with British intelligence and
Saudi intelligence and specifically authorized by William Casey, according
to Bob Woodward's history of Casey and the CIA. So
that is a clear-cut example of international terrorism. Very
unambiguous and I think it is one of the candidates for the prize for
the peak year of 1985.

Another
candidate surely would be the so-called Iron Fist operations that Shimon
Peres' government was carrying out in occupied southern Lebanon in March
of 1985. This is in southern Lebanon, which was under military occupation
in violation of the Security Council order to leave, but with U.S. authorization.
The Iron Fist operations were targeting what the high command called "terrorist
villagers" in southern Lebanon. It included
many massacres and atrocities and kidnapping of people for interrogation
and taking them to Israel and so on. It reached new depths of calculated
brutality and arbitrary murder, according to a Western diplomat familiar
with the region, who was observing. There was no pretense of
self-defense, rather it was openly undertaken for political ends. It was
conceded, it wasn't even argued. So that's a clear case of international
terrorism although here we might say that it is aggression. I'll call
it just "international terrorism" in line with the principle
that we bend over backwards to give the United States the benefit of the
doubt. Of course, this is a U.S. operation: Israel
does it because they are given arms, aid and diplomatic support by the
United States. So we will decide to call this just "international
terrorism," not the much more serious war crime of aggression. The
same, incidentally, was true of the much worse operations of 1982 when
Israel invaded Lebanon and killed maybe twenty thousand or so people,
again with crucial U.S. military, economic and diplomatic support.
The U.S. had
to veto a couple of Security Council resolutions to keep the slaughter
going, provide the arms, and so on, for it. So it's a U.S.-Israeli
invasion, if we are honest. The goal was to install a friendly regime
in Lebanon and oust the PLO, which would help persuade the Palestinians
to accept Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza. That's actually accurate
and I have to compliment the New York Times in saying that on January
24th. As far as I know, this is the first time
in mainstream U.S. literature that anyone has dared to say what was absolutely
common knowledge in Israel and in the dissident literature
20 years ago. I was writing this in 1983 just using Israeli sources but
it couldn't penetrate U.S. commentary. You might check and see. As far
as I know, this was the first breakthrough. I am not sure the reporter
understood what he was saying. But anyway he did say that. James Bennet,
January 24th, prize for James Bennet for telling the truth after 20 years.
And it's true and, of course, it's a textbook illustration of international
terrorism. This time we have to bend over backwards pretty
far to call it international terrorism because it is hard to say why this
isn't overt aggression -- the kind of action
for which U.S. and Israeli leaders should be subjected to Nuremberg trials
for real serious war crimes. But, again, let's keep to the
guidelines and let's say it's only international terrorism. Well, that's
the second example, the Iron Fist operations.

Third,
the only other example from 1985 that I know of took place two days before
Shimon Peres arrived in Washington to join Reagan in denouncing the evil
scourge of terrorism. Shortly before that, Peres
sent the Israeli air force to bomb Tunis killing 75 civilians, torn to
shreds with smart bombs. It was all rather accurately and graphically
depicted by a highly respected Israeli reporter in the Hebrew press in
Israel and corroborated by other sources. The United States cooperated
with that by withdrawing the Sixth Fleet so that they did not have to
inform their ally, Tunisia, that the bombers were on their way,
presumably getting refueled on the way. So that's the third candidate.
I don't know of any other candidates that even come close to being candidates...
Incidentally, George Schultz, the moderate, immediately after the bombing,
he telephoned the Israeli Foreign Minister to say that the United States
had considerable sympathy for this operation but he backed away from open
support for massive international terrorism or maybe aggression when the
Security Council unanimously condemned the attack as an attack of armed
aggression. The United States again abstaining against that.

So
those are the top three cases that win the prize for 1985, to my knowledge,
and again I'll assume that these are just international
terrorism so we are not calling for Nuremberg trials. Just more "international
terrorism" by "depraved opponents of civilization
itself" [
TVOTW Insert - IN
THE PRESENT DAY WE ARE NOW TALKING ABOUT BUSH AND THIS ADMINISTRATION
!!! ]and
examples which are pretty hard to miss, remember, because these are the
peak stories of the year for international terrorism in the Middle East.
There are three perfect examples. In fact, the only three major examples
that I know of. However, they aren't candidates. In fact, they are not
even in the running. They are not competitive. The examples that are in
the running are, for example, cited in the Current History issue, to which
I referred, which does discuss 1985 and gives two examples of the evil
scourge of terrorism, namely the hijacking of TWA 847, killing one American
Navy diver and the hijacking of the Achille Lauro which led to the killing
of Leon Klinghoffer, a crippled American -- both surely terrorist atrocities.
Those are the two examples that are in the running, that are memorable,
that count for international terrorism. Well, the hijackers for the TWA
plane claim -- correctly, in fact -- that Israel
was regularly hijacking ships in the international waters in transit between
Lebanon and Cyprus, killing people and kidnapping others, taking them
to Israel, either for interrogation or simply as hostages, keeping them
in jail for years. Some people are still in jail without charges but that
doesn't justify the hijacking on the assumption, which I accept at least,
that violence is not legitimate in retaliation against even worse atrocities
or as preemption against future atrocities. Violence is not legitimate
in such cases so we can dismiss those claims though they are in fact correct.
Incidentally, the U.S.-Israeli hijackings -- and remember, if Israel does
it, we are doing it -- those hijackings are also out of the
historical records. Occasionally, you find a reference to them in the
bottom of a column on something or other but they are not part of the
history of terrorism. The hijackers of the Achille Lauro claimed that
this was retaliation for the bombing of Tunis a couple of days earlier.
Well, we dismiss that with contempt on the same principle, namely, violence
is not justified in retaliation or preemption. Assuming that we can rise
to the minimal, moral, level that I mentioned earlier -- if we are not
confirmed hypocrites, in other words -- then some consequences follow
about other acts of retaliation and preemption but that's too obvious
to talk about so I will just leave it for you to think about. Well, that's
1985, the peak year of international terrorism in the Middle East.

As
a research project, you might see if I have left out anything that is
a competitor for the prize that I am not aware of. None are mentioned
in the literature on terrorism. As I said at the beginning, you don't
really have to work very hard to see these things. You have to work very
hard not to see them. It takes a really good education to miss this. 1985
was, of course, not the first or the last act of international terrorism
in the Middle East. There are many others that are very important. For
example, in 1975, Israel, meaning Israeli pilots with U.S. planes and
U.S. support, in December 1975, they bombed a village in Lebanon killing
over 50 people. No pretext was offered but everybody knew what
the reason was. At that time, the UN Security Council was meeting to consider
a resolution which was supported by the entire
world with marginal exceptions -- only one crucial exception, the United
States, which vetoed the resolution -- calling for a diplomatic
settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, incorporating UN 242 and
all of its wording of the main resolution, security and territorial integrity
and all those nice things on the internationally recognized border. The
offending part of this one was that it also referred to Palestinian national
rights and that's not acceptable to the United States. It rejected them
then and it rejects them now, contrary to a lot of nonsense that you read.
The U.S. vetoed the resolution. That continued year after year
and is still going on now, of efforts of diplomatic settlement, which
the U.S. has unilaterally blocked. Israel does
not have a veto at the Security Council so they reacted to the debate
by bombing Lebanon and killing about 50 people without a pretext. That's
not in the annals of international terrorism either. The U.S.
supported both of them, lots of deaths, hundreds of thousands of people
driven out and so on. Clinton had to back off his support for the 1996
invasion after the Qana massacre, over a hundred people in a UN refugee
camp. At that point he said, "can't handle this any more, you better
leave." There was no pretext of self-defense
in this case. This is just outright international terrorism or maybe aggression.
And it continues.

So
let's go up to the current intifada, which broke out on September 30th
of year 2000. In the first couple of days, there was no fire from Palestinians,
some stone throwing, but Israel was in fact using
U.S. attack helicopters to attack civilian apartment complexes and so
on, killing and wounding dozens of people in the first few days.
The Clinton Administration responded to this by, I'll borrow our President's
phrase, by "enhancing terror." You recall President Bush condemned
the Palestinians for "enhancing terror" last month, so I'll
use his phrase in line with the guidelines. The
Clinton Administration committed itself to enhancing terror on October
3rd by making a deal for the biggest shipment in a decade of military
helicopters to Israel along with spare parts for the Apache attack helicopters
that were sent a couple of weeks earlier. That's enhancing terror. In
the days right after, these helicopters were being used to murder and
wound civilians, attacking apartment complexes and so on. The
press cooperated by refusing to report this. Note: not
failing to report it -- refusing to report it. It
was specifically brought to the attention of editors and they simply made
it clear that they were not going to report it. There is no
question about the facts, incidentally, but to this day it has not been
reported, except in the margins. That policy continues.

Skip
to December 2001. George Bush was condemning the Palestinians for enhancing
terror and he contributed in the conventional ways to enhancing terror,
in crucial ways, in fact. On December 15th, the
UN Security Council debated a European-initiated resolution, calling on
both sides to reduce violence and calling for the introduction of international
monitors to assist in monitoring a reduction of violence. That's a very
important step. That was vetoed by the United States. ... It's
hard to think of any other interpretation for this. The press didn't have
to bother giving an interpretation. The press
didn't have to bother giving an interpretation because it was barely reported.
It then went to the General Assembly where it wasn't reported at all and
there was an overwhelming vote supporting the same resolution. This
time, the United States and Israel were not entirely isolated in opposition
as several Pacific Islands joined in -- Nauru and one or two others. So,
therefore, not the usual splendid isolation. I don't recall that that
was reported. About ten days before that there was another major contribution
to enhancing terror. The Fourth Geneva Conventions, according to the entire
world, literally, outside of Israel, applied to the occupied territories.
The United States refuses, it doesn't vote against
this when it comes up in the United Nations, it abstains. I
presume the reason is the United States doesn't want to take such an open
blatant stand in violation of fundamental principles of international
law, particularly because of the circumstances under which they were enacted.

If
you recall, the Geneva Conventions were established right after the Second
World War in order to criminalize the acts of the Nazis, so saying they
don't apply is a pretty strong statement. However, outside of the United
States and Israel, the whole world agrees. The International Red Cross,
which is the agency responsible for applying and interpreting them, agrees.
In fact, as far as I am aware, there is no further question about this.
Switzerland, which is the responsible state, called a meeting of the High
Contracting Parties for the Geneva conventions -- that is, those like
the United States that are legally obligated by treaty to enforce them,
a high solemn commitment -- called a meeting on December 5th 2001 in Geneva
and the meeting took place and passed a strong
resolution determining that the Geneva conventions do apply to the occupied
territories which makes illegal just about everything that the United
States and Israel do there. They went through the list -- settlements,
displacements and everything that goes on. The
United States boycotted the session. They got another country
to boycott them, Australia. According to the Australian press, under heavy
U.S. pressure, Australia joined in boycotting them. If the U.S. boycotts
it, it's like a negative vote at the Security Council or the General Assembly.
It doesn't get reported and it's out of history. But
that's another important step to enhancing terror. All this took place,
incidentally, in the midst of a twenty-one day truce, a one-sided truce.
The Palestinians weren't carrying out any acts but a couple of dozen Palestinians
were killed, including a dozen children. That was right in
the middle of these efforts to enhance terror... Maybe that's an unfair
interpretation and there is some other motive that I'm not thinking of
but that's what they look like to me. You can think about that.

In
any event, international terrorism in the Middle East certainly continues
and has a long history and if you look over the record, of course, it
is mixed and complicated but I think you will find that the balance is
pretty much along the lines that I described, in fact, the balance reflects
the means of violence available, as it usually does. If
you look around at terror, in fact, that's why, in the whole range of
terror, state terror is far worse than individual terror for the obvious
reason that states have means of violence that individuals don't have,
or groups. And that's what you find if you look, I think, overwhelmingly.
It is commonly said that terrorism is a weapon of the weak. That's
completely false, at least if you accept the official U.S. definition
of terror. If you do that, then terror is overwhelming the weapon of the
strong, like most other weapons. Well, that's history but all
of this stuff is out of history. History is what is created by well-educated
intellectuals and it doesn't have to have any resemblance to that thing
called "history" by naive people and if you check this, I think
you will find this true.

Well,
that's the Middle East. Let's turn to Central America, the
other main focus of the plague by depraved opponents of civilization itself.
Here, I will be brief because the core parts are uncontroversial, at least,
uncontroversial among people who have minimal regard for international
law and international institutions and so on. Actually, the size of that
category is very easily estimated, namely, ask yourself how often what
I'm about to say has appeared in the discussions about the evil plague
of terrorism in the past five months. Huge flood, but how much has been
devoted to some uncontroversial cases, again, uncontroversial if you think
the World Court and Security Council and international law have some significance.
Well, in 1986, the International Court of Justice
condemned the United States for international terrorism --
"unlawful use of force" -- in its war against Nicaragua. Again
I am going to keep to the guidelines, bend over backwards, and
allow this to be interpreted just as international terrorism, not the
war crime of aggression. So we will call it "international
terrorism." The court ordered the United States to terminate the
crimes and to pay substantial reparations, millions of dollars. Congress
reacted by instantly escalating the war by new funding... Nicaragua took
the matter to the Security Council, which debated a resolution calling
on all states to observe international law, mentioning no one but everyone
knew who was meant. The U.S. vetoed it. Nicaragua then went
to the General Assembly which passed similar resolutions in successive
years. The United States and Israel opposed
and in one year they got El Salvador [to join them].

All
of this is out of history. It has to be. It is just inconsistent with
their preferred image of what history is supposed to be and, as I say,
you can check how much these uncontroversial cases have been referred
to recently. And remember who were the individuals responsible: people
like Negroponte, proconsul of Honduras, Rumsfeld, special envoy to the
Middle East, and so on, plenty of continuity. The U.S., as I said, reacted
by escalating the war and for the first time giving official orders to
its mercenary forces to attack what are called "soft targets."
That's what the Southern Command called them, "soft targets,"
meaning undefended civilian targets like agricultural cooperatives and
so on. That was known and it was discussed in the United States. It was
considered legitimate by the "Left," so Michael Kinsley who
represents the "Left" in the mainstream debate, in an interesting
article -- he was then editor of the New Republic -- in which he said
that, we shouldn't be too quick to condemn State Department authorization
for attacks on undefended civilian targets because we have to apply pragmatic
criteria. We have to carry out "cost benefit
analysis" and see whether, as he put it, the amount of blood poured
in is compensated by a good outcome, namely, democracy. What
we will determine to be democracy and what that means you can see by looking
at the states next door like El Salvador and Guatemala which were okay
democracies. And if it passes our test, then that's it, okay. So, in other
words, international terrorism is fine -- assuming it meets pragmatic
criteria, now across the spectrum, Left or Right among "we"
-- that is educated and privileged intellectuals, not the [general] population,
of course.

In
Nicaragua, the population had an army to defend it -- it was bad enough,
tens of thousands of people killed, the country practically devastated,
may never recover -- but it had an army to defend it. In El Salvador and
Guatemala, that wasn't true, the army was the state terrorists. The
U.S.-supported state terrorists, they were the army. There was no one
to defend the population and, in fact, the atrocities were far worse.
Also, they are not a state so they could not go to the World Court or
the Security Council to follow legal means -- of course, without any effect,
because "we," people like us, have
determined that the world is going to be ruled by force, not by law.
And since we have the power, as long as we determine that, a state that
tries to follow legitimate means of responding to international terrorism
doesn't having anything to do. But that's our choice, nobody else's choice.
You can't blame anyone else on that. There was, however, popular resistance,
not elite resistance, but popular resistance to the atrocities there so
that the U.S. had to resort to an international terrorist network -- an
extraordinary international terrorist network.

Remember,
the U.S. is a powerful state, it's not like Libya. If Libya wants to carry
out terrorist acts, they hire Carlos the Jackal or something. The United
States hires terrorist states, we're big guys. So the terrorist network
consisted of Taiwan, Britain, Israel, Argentina -- at least, as long as
it was under the rule of the neo-Nazi generals, when they were unfortunately
removed, they fell out of the system -- Saudi Arabian funding, quite a
substantial international terrorist network, never been anything like
it. In contemporary terms, we might call it an "Axis of Evil,"
I suppose. The outcome -- again keeping to the
guidelines: we believe our leaders -- was hundreds of thousands of people
slaughtered and millions of orphans and refugees, every conceivable atrocity,
the region devastated. The single uncontroversial case, Nicaragua,
which was the least of them, that alone far surpasses the crimes of September
11th -- and the others suffered far worse. Again we are bending over backwards
and giving the U.S. the benefit of the doubt so we are only calling it
international terrorism organized by depraved opponents of civilization
itself. Well, that's the second major area, Central America.

All
of this, however, is off the record, too.
[In] the Current History journal -- and it's typical in this respect --
nothing that I have just referred to is mentioned. Nor is it in the whole
scholarly literature, in fact, except way out at the margins. You can
check and see it just doesn't count. The '80s are described as the era
of state-sponsored international terrorism but they are not referring
to any of these things. The U.S. was trying to prevent state-sponsored
international terrorism by taking "pro-active" means like the
most massive international terrorist network that's ever been known. That's
very typical of the scholarly literature, journalism and, again, you can
do a check. There has barely been a word on any of this as the second
phase of the war on terrorism has been declared once again with pretty
much the same people and every reason to expect some more [similar] outcomes.

Well,
from all of this an obvious conclusion follows: there is an operational
definition of terrorism, the one that is actually used -- it means terror
that they carry out against us -- that's terrorism, and nothing else passes
through the filter. As far as I know, that's a historical universal, I
can't find an exception to that. You might try. For example, the Japanese
in China and Manchuria [claimed they] were "defending" the population
against Chinese terrorists and going to create an earthly paradise for
them if they could control the terrorists. The Nazis in occupied Europe
[claimed they] were "defending" the "legitimate" governments
like Vichy and the population from the terrorist partisans who were supported
from abroad, as indeed they were. They were run from London, Poland and
France and so on. ... Also, as far as I am aware, this is virtually universal
among intellectuals, educated folks like us. Apart from statistical error,
this is the line that they take. Now, it doesn't look that way in history,
but you have to remember who writes history.

That
ought to leave you with a little skepticism. If you look at actual history,
not the one that's written, I think you will find that this is the case
and I could even maybe suggest it as a research topic to some enterprising
graduate student who aspires to a career as a taxi driver. Just to continue
to the present, let's just take the last couple of months. September 11th
was a perfectly clear example of international terrorism, no controversy
about that so we don't have to waste time on it. What about the reaction?
Well, it turns out the reaction is also an uncontroversial
case of international terrorism. Again, let's keep to the guidelines
-- we'll just listen to what our leaders say. So,
on October 11th, President Bush announced to the Afghan people that we
will keep bombing you until you hand over people who we suspect of terrorist
acts although we refuse to provide any evidence and we refuse
to enter into any negotiations for extradition and transfer -- a clear
case of international terrorism.

On
October 28th, the British counterpart, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, who
is the chief of the British defense staff, took it a step further. Remember,
getting rid of the Taliban regime was not a war aim -- that was an afterthought.
Three weeks after the bombing began, that [aim] was added, presumably
so that intellectuals would have something to feel good about or something,
I don't know. Anyway, three weeks after the bombing,
that was added as a new war aim and Admiral Boyce announced to the Afghan
people accordingly, I think this was the first mention of this war aim,
that we will continue bombing you until you change your leadership.
First, that was all very prominent, page one of the New York Times in
both cases. Two, both cases are textbook illustrations of international
terrorism, if not aggression, but
we are still bending over backwards, and it's all off the record by usual
convention. We're doing it so it doesn't count. It's
only when "they" carry out what we officially define as "terrorism"
that it counts.

Well,
it's easy to go on but let me just return to the weak thesis: there can't
be a war against terrorism as terrorism is defined in official U.S. documents,
it's a logical impossibility. This is a small sample of illustrations
-- you can go on easily -- but it's enough to show that that can't be
true. Well, that's the weak thesis. What about
the strong thesis, that it is all so entirely obvious that it would be
embarrassing to talk about it because it's all right on the surface, nothing
hidden about any of this? Everything that I mention is perfectly
well known, you don't have to penetrate anything to discover it. No obscure
sources, nothing, just the obvious evidence. And
you can easily add to it, there's a ton of literature about it
for the last twenty years but that literature also can't be discussed
because it comes out with the wrong conclusion. So it's treated the same
way terrorism is in our intellectual culture. Again, choice, not a necessity.
So we end up with a kind of dilemma. If we are not honest, forget it.
If we are honest, there's a dilemma. One possibility
is just to acknowledge that we are total hypocrites and then to at least
have the decency to stop talking about human rights, right and wrong and
good and evil and so on and say "we are hypocrites and we have force
and we are going to run the world by force, period. Let's forget about
everything else." The other option is harder to pursue
but it's imperative. Unless we would like to contribute to still worse
disasters that are likely to lie ahead.

(In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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THE
FOUNDATION, INSPIRATION, EMPATHY AND SPIRIT
WITH WHICH TVOTW WAS CONCEIVED AND BUILT UPON
RESIDES WITH THE FOLLOWING EVERLASTING PRINCIPLE

- "LOVE CONQUERS ALL THINGS" -

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"IF
YOU WANT OTHERS TO BE HAPPY, PRACTICE COMPASSION. IF YOU WANT TO BE
HAPPY, PRACTICE COMPASSION."

- DALAI LAMA -

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"YOU
NEVER KNOW WHAT THE OUTCOME IS - BUT THE TRUTH IS ALWAYS THE BEST PLACE
TO START"

- JULIAN ASSANGE -

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-
FAMOUS QUOTE -

"Human
beings are the only creatures on earth that claim a God - and the only
living thing that behaves like it hasn't got one."